The Turing Exception Read online

  Praise for The Turing Exception

  “Hertling is the Asimov of our generation.”

  —Brad Feld, Co-founder of Foundry Group

  “Action-packed yet nuanced look at a world where artificial intelligence is commonplace.”

  —Ben Huh, CEO and Founder of Cheezburger

  Praise for other books by William Hertling

  “Chilling and compelling”

  —Wired on Avogadro Corp

  “Awesome, thrilling, and very, very real. In a world where self-driving cars and AI stock-traders are becoming real, Hertling’s AI Singularity may be just around the corner. You need to read this book!”

  —Ramez Naam, author of Nexus, on Avogadro Corp

  “A fun read and tantalizing study of the future of technology: both inviting and alarming.”

  —Harper Reed, CEO Modest Inc., former CTO of Obama for America, on The Last Firewall

  “Among the most plausible and best conceived explorations of [artificial intelligence]”

  —Peter A. Garretson, Lt Col, USAF on A.I. Apocalypse and The Last Firewall

  “A fast-paced techno-thriller set in a hybrid human/AI world with social tension and dominance conflicts, where advanced neurotechnology and nanotechnology are part of daily life.”

  —KurzweilAI.net on The Last Firewall

  THE TURING EXCEPTION

  A liquididea press Book / 2015

  UUID# AE906759-38BB-4BEE-99F7-56E9AD6FCD93

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Copyright © 2015 by William Hertling

  Cover Concept by Jason Gurley

  Cover Design by M. S. Corley

  Lyrics to “Level Up” from Ignite by Ruby Calling. Copyright © 2012 by Erin Gately, Jean MacDonald, and Natasha MacDonald. Used with permission. Please visit rubycalling.com to find out more about the band and their music.

  Formatting by:

  E-QUALITY PRESS

  Keywords: technological singularity, artificial intelligence, robotics, transhumanism, posthumanism, cyberpunk.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

  Please subscribe to my mailing list at williamhertling.com to find out about new book releases.

  The name E-QUALITY PRESS and the logo consisting of the letters “EQP” over an open book with power cord are registered trademarks of E-QUALITY PRESS.

  http://EQPbooks.com

  PRODUCED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  For Dave, Gene, and Mike.

  CONTENTS

  Part 0: Before

  Chapter 00

  Part 1: Consolidation

  Chapter 0

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Part 2: Rearchitecture

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Part 3: End Game

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  Part 0

  BEFORE

  It is the year 2043.

  For thirty years, humans and artificial intelligence, or AI, have coexisted in a carefully calibrated balance of power.

  Some AI live their lives only inside computers, never visiting the real world, while others take the form of robot bodies. But all have been ruled by a rigid caste reputation system that ensures only those AI who are trustworthy and who contribute to both human and AI civilization will increase in power.

  Humans are changing. Most have neural implants to connect them to the global net, but a growing number have augmented their intelligence with computers in their minds, becoming part human, part AI. Many spend their lives immersed in virtual reality, rarely visiting the real world.

  Everything is about to change.

  Chapter 00

  * * *

  June, 2043 in Portland, Oregon.

  CAT STEPPED OUT of the shower seconds before her neural implant signaled an urgent call from Mike Williams. She went to voice-only.

  “What’s up, Mike?” Mike, her longtime friend, headed the Institute for Applied Ethics, the governing body for AI.

  “We have a developing situation in Miami. Our staff AI are modeling power use data and think there’s a chance of unsanctioned computers. It might be nothing, but I’m hoping you or Leon could check it out.”

  Cat thought briefly about the high chair covered in a layer of dried baby food that overwhelmed even the cleaning bots, and the load of diapers that needed washing. She glanced toward the bedroom, where her husband, Leon Tsarev, still slept. “I’m in. Leon can watch the baby.”

  “Great. I’ll have a supersonic waiting at the airport for you.”

  Cat disconnected and considered whether to wake Leon to tell him about the trip. It was a borderline defensible argument that he needed sleep. She recorded a message for his implant, setting the flag to auto-play when he woke.

  She dressed quickly, a pair of custom, nano-grown bulletproof pants. They looked like leather and felt like spandex-cotton, which wasn’t standard issue; but when your friends were some of the smartest AI in the world, 3D printing a pair was a simple favor. Over her shirt she added a double shoulder holster, picking her two favorite guns—the SIG Sauer P12 with ceramic, armor-piercing bullets, and the new Remington Smart9 with guided rounds—out of the lockbox.

  She stepped out the front door and dodged an early morning bonsai drone maintaining the ornamentals on the front porch. Several hundred sensors and cameras from the neighbors’ homes and cars, the city’s monitors, and the community WatchNet surveyed everything, watching for anomalies. She negated them all with a thought, subverting their systems at the network level with about as much effort as it took to blow a gnat away.

  She scanned the net out of habit. She sensed the always-present background traffic
of automated bots and equipment, almost a hundred thousand devices within just a one-block radius. The sim-house two blocks over, full of VR addicts in their immersion tanks, drew enough electricity for thirty households, more than their own solar panels could make, and also sucked on the neighborhood power grid. The network traffic they generated was immense, enough to be visualized as thick red lines radiating out from the house through the mesh nodes.

  No immediate danger. She got into the car, which drove itself to the airport. She and Leon had traded in the flying car for a marginally safer land-based vehicle after the baby was born. She overrode the car’s self-driving algorithms to take it well over the speed limit.

  At the airport, she pulled up to the National Guard gate, broadcasting the ID she normally used with the Institute. They must have been expecting her, because the gate opened as she approached, and the soldiers and bots on guard stood at attention.

  Since she had no official standing with the government or the Institute, they couldn’t have known who she was. But Mike had influence at the highest level, because the Institute for Applied Ethics oversaw all AI. Sure, those AI might be citizens of nation-states, but the Institute set the rules and policies the AI had to follow. With AI now responsible for 80 percent of the global economy, that made the Institute more influential than most countries.

  She pulled up next to the supersonic transport, right on the tarmac at the end of the runway. The looming grey bulk looked odd, its dynamic airframe slack and limp on the ground, like it had sacks of jello strapped to the side. Whatever AI was flying was completely unaware of self-image. Weird, considering most AI tended to be image-conscious.

  She instructed the car to take itself home, and climbed the steps in a hurry.

  “Mon Chaton!”

  Cat glanced up in surprise. “Helena! Mike didn’t mention . . .” She trailed off. Helena was a Durga Mark III, an armored battle bot with eight tentacles. But today Helena wore a seat belt and gripped her chair with multiple tentacles. If Cat wasn’t mistaken, the veteran bot appeared . . . scared. “Everything okay?”

  “First real-world flight for the AI flying this thing. He got out of the incubator this morning.”

  She switched to a heavily encrypted channel and sent a message by implant: “I could fly this thing better with half my sensors destroyed and two tentacles tied behind my back.” Out loud: “Better strap yourself in.”

  Cat sat next to Helena, the two of them the only passengers in a large cabin that held twenty-four widely spaced seats designed for troop transport, a configuration the military used to drop a mixed team of human and robot soldiers into a hot zone.

  As the harness buckle slid home, a loud crack from the airframe signaled the move into takeoff configuration and the engines went full-throttle. They rocketed down the runway using barely a quarter of the length of the strip before getting airborne. Through the net Cat sensed hundreds of alarms blaring as they broke the sound barrier before even leaving the city limits.

  “I see what you mean,” Cat said, and loosened her white-knuckled grip on the armrests. She turned to Helena. A new scar creased the surface of her ceramic armor. A half dozen alloy tentacles, used for locomotion, manipulation, and fighting, surrounded her central body, where Helena’s processors, power supply, and sensors were located. Despite the fighting robot’s fierce presence, she was loyal, fair, and honest. And Cat’s best friend. “It’s good to see you again.”

  “The same, my kitten. How did Mike get you to come?”

  “It was this or wash diapers. Have you ever washed diapers?”

  “I’m sorry. Who cared for Ada and your house when you and Leon were sleep-deprived? Besides, turn off your olfactory sense, and it’s not so bad.”

  Cat froze, staring at Helena. It was true, the neural implant that permeated her brain had complete control over her senses: it could create any scent, sight, or feeling as realistically as the real world. And it could, just as easily, remove any scent, sight, or feeling.

  “You never thought of that?” Helena asked. She waggled a tentacle. “Motherhood has addled your brain. You should spend less time stacking toys and more time out in the field.”

  Cat punched Helena gently and laughed.

  * * *

  As they approached Miami, Mike called back with new data from the Institute. The universal social reputation system that caused AI to behave ethically also compelled them to report any unusual behavior they encountered. Since the AI monitored the net, the electrical system, the transportation grid, and virtually everything about modern life, that meant that they quickly discovered any suspicious behavior.

  “Several AI reported fluctuations in the power grid in an industrial district,” Mike said. “I’m sending the coordinates. It could be nothing, maybe malfunctioning equipment or a replicator run amok.”

  “Got it,” Cat said.

  She knew from long history what the Institute and Mike really feared most: unsanctioned computers, because they could allow an AI to run off the grid, without monitoring, and without any checks on its power.

  The reality was that the Institute had operatives who could handle most routine stuff. They usually only called Cat or Leon in for the complicated jobs. Either Mike was extra concerned about this, and needed Cat’s unique abilities, or he was being kind and giving her some time away from the baby.

  “There’s more,” Mike said. “We bid on historical data from WatchNet for the region around the building. A dozen humans went in on Friday. Nobody’s come out since.”

  “What’d they go in for?” Cat asked.

  “Not sure. They all had bids in on temporary work, general labor sort of stuff. Could have been anything from running factory equipment to moving furniture.”

  “Why wouldn’t the company have used robots?”

  “Don’t know,” Mike said. “If we get any new data, we’ll pass it along. Be careful.”

  As the plane came in for final approach, Cat’s adrenaline surged with the anticipation of action. She spent the last few minutes practicing qigong, the silent meditation that calmed her mind and body. With the ease of long-honed skills, she subconsciously tailored her implant for optimum performance, speeding up her reflexes, augmenting her mind with supplemental processors, and taking control of her nervous system so that she wouldn’t dump so much adrenaline that she’d make bad decisions.

  The military aircraft put down at Homestead Air Reserve base, where an Army truck waited for them. A lone battle bot greeted them and transmitted the credentials for the truck. Cat’s implant received them, and she assumed control of the vehicle.

  They drove north, Helena and Cat side by side in the big cab. Cat meditated, moving the noise out of her brain until she could reach effortlessly into the net and subvert the other autonomous vehicles on the road, moving them all out of their way. They raced down the middle of now-cleared roads for fifteen minutes until they entered the industrial district.

  Cat felt through the net as they neared the target building, but she didn’t sense anything. She glanced at Helena.

  “No. I don’t get anything either, although my infrared sensors show the warehouse radiating twenty degrees hotter than any of the surrounding buildings. Whatever it is, it’s highly exothermic.”

  “Power consumption and exothermic. Not good.”

  “Could be industrial machinery,” Helena said. “Of course, a server farm would be worse.”

  Cat frowned. “Or runaway nano.”

  If there was one fear greater than an AI seizing control of all the world’s infrastructure, it was that of endlessly replicating nanotechnology. Nanotech, machinery at the atomic level, could be used to make nanobots, cell-sized robots that could turn matter into more copies of itself. Nanobots were everywhere, used for everything from
reinforcing building structures to augmenting the human immune system. Programmed by AI, they did exactly what they were told. But given the wrong instructions, they could turn the entire Earth and everyone on it into nothing but a seething mass of nanobots.

  “Not likely,” Helena said. “We have many layers of safeguards.”

  “We have safeguards against bad behavior by AI, and yet we still get called out to deal with them.”

  They pulled up at the street and got out of the truck. Side by side, they examined the plain white cinderblock structure fifty feet away.

  “The building temperature has increased five degrees since we arrived,” Helena said.

  Cat felt for a camera or sensor inside the building she could hijack, but she found nothing. “Can you see inside?”

  “No.”

  She didn’t particularly want to walk through the doorway into who-knew-what. “I’m going to use the truck.”

  Cat guided the military truck with her implant, driving it across a patch of crabgrass to ram the cinderblock wall at twenty miles an hour. The truck hit the wall and the cinderblocks gave way, with the truck wedged halfway inside.

  Now Cat had access to the truck’s cameras and sensors. She shared the feed with Helena.

  There was nothing inside but a flat, featureless floor that reached all the way across to the far wall of the structure.

  “It’s one hundred and forty degrees,” Helena said. “And EMF is through the roof.”

  “No sign of the workers who went in on Friday.”

  Cat checked, found the truck had a basic spectrometer, and scanned the floor. Silicon, rare metals, fragments of diamond, iron.

  Helena also saw the measurements. “It is bloody nano!” she said, taking a step back.

  Cat opened a three-way connection to Mike and Helena and transmitted the data. “I’ve never seen a pool of nano that big,” she said. “It’s inactive, but clearly on and ready to do something, radiating heat like crazy.”